hypertext novel

Ever since their appearance in the early 1990s, hypertext novels were presented as the pinnacle of digital aesthetics and claimed to represent the revolutionary future of literature. However, as a literary phenomenon, hypertext novels have remained marginal. The article presents some scientifically derived explanations as to why hypertext novels do not have a mass audience and why they are likely to remain a marginal contribution in the history of literature. Three explanatory frameworks are provided: (1) how hypertext relates to our cognitive information processing in general; (2) the empirically derived psychological reasons for how we read and enjoy literature in particular; and (3) the likely evolutionary origins of such a predilection for storytelling and literature. It is shown how hypertext theory, by ignoring such knowledge, has yielded misguided statements and uncorroborated claims guided by ideology rather than by scientifically supported knowledge.

This essay looks at the complexity and structure in Richard Holeton's absurdist hypertext novel, Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. in 2001. 

A deep analysis on the birth of Italian Electronic Literature in the 90's, with a special focus on "Ra-Dio", the first Italian hypertextual novel, written by Lorenzo Miglioli.

The work aims also to analyze the development of electronic literature by examining the work of associations such as ELO and ELMCIP, and to highlight the connections with Italo Calvino's postmodernist theories about combinatory literature.

The chapter provides a brief history of experiments in the hypertext novel in America during the 1990s. The 1990 Eastgate publication of Michael Joyce’s Afternoon, A Story earned hypertext fiction a place within institutionalised literary culture. Robert Coover’s 1992 essay "The End of Books" announced hypertext fiction as a challenge to traditional conceptions such as narrative linearity, the sense of closure, and the “desire for coherence.” While some theorists, such as George Landow, praised hypertext for instantiating poststructuralist theory, others such as Sven Birkerts, in The Gutenberg Elegies, regarded it with strong concern. The publication of more hypertext fictions such as Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden (1991) and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995) resulted in a small, dedicated interest community. However, no paradigm-shifting rise in interest took place. The independent publication of hypertext novels on the World Wide Web such as Robert Arellano’s Sunshine 69 (1996), Mark Amerika’s Grammatron (1997), and William Gillespie, Frank Marquardt, Scott Rettberg, and Dirk Stratton’s The Unknown (1998) briefly revitalised the networked fictional form before it was eclipsed in the first decade of the 21st century by a range of other digital narrative forms.

Fabrizio Venerandi is author of two novels published in form of hypertextual ebooks and also co-founder of the publishing house Quintadicopertina. In this interview he talks about the book series Polistorie (Polystories) and about the basic ideas that inspired this project. Recalling the experience he made with the groundbreaking work on the first MUD in Italy in 1990, Venerandi describes the relations between literature and video games. Starting from a comparison between print literature tradition and new media, at last, he faces the problems of creation and preservation of digital works.

In this interview, Carlo Cinato, author of the hypertext novel L’uomo senza cappello e la donna con le scarpe grigie (The man without a hat and the woman with grey shoes) and curator of the blog Parolata, explains how he started getting interested in electronic literature and how he conceived his novel. Through the study of hypertextual and non sequencial books in printed form he discovered a new way of writing which was adaptable to the technical possibilities of the web and the ebooks. According to Cinato there are analogies between literary works of the print tradition and the digital tradition, but in particular the latter are characterised by the possibility of making a leap inside the text. The hypertextual structure alters the role of the reader, the materiality of the text, the way of reading and the way to write for an author. Moreover Cinato sees the writing of the novel as an experiment. It was an occasion to write by using one of the seven hypertext links he has pinpointed. In the end he explains in which way the hypertextual structure changes the way of reading and how it can be installed also in ebooks.

(Source: Interviewer's abstract)

Hypertext and story seem to have clearly opposite structures: story is linear whole hypertext is non-linear. How can then hypertext fictions be constructed? We compare here the structure of classic narrative and of hypertext and explore the importance of sequence. To solve the apparent opposition, we consider the structure of our memory, where sequential and non-sequential relations are present. We found so multiple suggestion that can help us to explain how to build an hypernovel. Finally, we show how and why hypertext fiction can be used for learning.

Poststructuralism has influenced novelistic creations along the last forty years, in such a way that novels are changing their linear structure. I would like to describe the importance of some fundamental points of poststructuralism in the structure of three different novels from diverse spanish and international authors who wrote between the 60s and 80s. I will describe the important role played on each by the plot, the author and narrator, and also the reader, whose importance has grown after the apparition of the reader-oriented theories.

Nowadays the relationship between cyberliterature and traditional literature is very complex. Despite there is a number of digital works and the increase of using the Internet, cyberliterature does not appeal easily to readers, editors and critics. The general public, even though active on the Net, does not seem to be interested in this new narrative form that hypertext uses, multimedia and interactivity. In this situation we wonder: To what extent digital genres inherit from the printing machine or its hybrid modalities -transmedia, crossmedia, multimedia, mash-ups, pastiches- from successful genres of the 20th century -photography, radio, cinema and television?And to conclude, the main question is: Can we talk about literature when most of the digitally born works have made of words (LITER) a "litter", a waste element substituted by the NET and its images, sound, videos, animations, digital art, graphic design, etc? To sum up, is LiterNETature, LITERature?